Learning to eat everything

[TiK]

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Uni (sea urchin) - slimy

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My entire family loves this stuff and my girlfriend does as well, and I just can't stomach it. Something about the texture and smell. I often try it when my girlfriend and I go out to eat sushi, but I just can't do it.

[jeffnc]

OK here's something I really can't eat. Spicy food. Some guys say they had to build up their "tolerance". But I really don't see the point. It's simply painful.

However I will eat some horseradish, hot mustard, or ginger. Those things have a different "heat" than jalapeno or tabasco. They don't cause me pain, and don't cause my face to sweat. Is there anything that might change my mind? Not that I feel like I'm missing something, but hot buffalo wings sure do seem to be popular.

[jeffnc]

Wow, olives are so good. I understand the point about salt. Can't think of any solution. Do you like olive oil? Try dipping bread in it, for starters. Try a good "extra virgin" olive oil.

[citanul]

Diablo,

I think my favorite lobster foods I've eaten have starred lobster that had been hacked in to bits: Lobster risotto, and a baked lobster & pineapple dish I had at some random seafood place in Mexico. I can understand not being in to it, as many people believe (understandably) that they are just conduits for whatever citrusy/buttery sauce you feel like putting around. But hey, I've never discriminated against anything else on the basis of being nothing but a good sauce transporter. I'm not really a fan of dismantling the damn things myself, and I've never really found a huge lump of lobster to be the most efficient presentation. Thus, steakhouse can't be my favorite places to do a lobster.

Mussels I really like. Mussels with marinara is good, but kind of boring and mostly relies on the marinara for taste. Mussels that have been steamed with beer, onions, and garlic - now that's a keeper. One of my favorite dishes in Chicago is a fire roasted mussels served with a butter sauce and sort of coated with a hot spice mixture. But like lobster, a lot of the time when you're eating mussels, it's really for the other stuff, and depending on the presentation and preparation it's often more work than it's worth... I guess shellfish just seem to have less individual taste and edibility than "fish fish," and become butter transporters more than anything else. I do agree on crabcakes though, they are almost always good if you get them anywhere decent.

jeffnc,

Whatever dude, you're totally in the right here. There's hots that have flavors (and jalepenos and even jabaneros have flavor that is not just heat) and then there's just hot for pain sake. There's no great reason to "up your tolerance" in order to be able to suffer just a bit less when you are suffering. There's ways of prepping jalapenos that involve less heat. If you want to prep something at home that will accomplish this to see if you actually like jalapeno flavor, try making a guacamole, and putting in a couple jalapenos. When prepping them before chopping, halve them lengthwise (or even quarter) and remove all seeds and as much of the white connective tissue as you can. The pepper will still have some heat, but you'll get much less, and much more of the "fruit" flavor. All you're really missing out on is: pain, buying more beers, machismo, and the endorphine rush. (Not to say there's anything wrong with any of those things.)

7on,

Wtf, who is serving you cartilage and tendon and telling you you're supposed to like it?

All,

Tomato juice, yuck.

[JaBlue]

Diablo, you should try crab cakes.

As for me, I'm willing to eat a lot of stuff, but the main thing that I've gotten into recently (within the last year) and never liked before was fish. I tried it on a whim at a nice place and it RULED. If anyone knows of good rundowns on different types of fish or fish meals I'd love to see them as I've only ordered fish at a restaurant 3 or 4 times in my life. I love salmon and hated macadamia crusted ahi [could have been that the prep was bad, but I thought it was flavorless, boring, and annoying. And it cost a lot too!

edit: one thing I always do when I have the chance is try something I've never had before. In one of my recent expensive restaurant outings this was ox tail at an italian place. In spain I had octopus. The ox tail was phenomenal and the octopus was very well prepared but just weird tasting. It was alright but I wouldn't get it again.

[TiK]

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Lobster - I used to dislike it, but have gotten over that. I still don't get blown away by lobster. I'm gonna try lobster at the next really nice place I go to. How about trying this at a steak place? Is surf and turf at a nice steakhouse generally a really good version of lobster? Or should I go with a seafood place to get a really great lobster experience? How about the type of place? Do I need to go to a really expensive place to get a really tasty lobster?

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My girlfriend is a lobster fanatic and she says that one of her more memorable lobsters was eaten at Smith & Wollensky in NYC. So yeah, some steakhouses can do lobster right. She says that the key is that it's not overcooked, or the meat becomes tough and rubbery.

[jeffnc]

El Diablo and citanul, I understand your point - I look forward to trying some of that!

[Slow Play Ray]

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Lobster - I used to dislike it, but have gotten over that. I still don't get blown away by lobster.

Crab - Similar feelings to lobster. I have had crab meat in various stuff and it's fine, I just don't love it as much as others.

Shrimp - Occassionally I'll have some shrimp in a spring roll, or in dim sum, or the sweet shrimp at a sushi place. I'm still not really into it, but don't totally hate it like I did.

Mussels - Have had like two and was not into it.

Clams - I guess I'm ok w/ clam chowder. Hmmm... Not even sure where you eat clams otherwise.

Cajun food is another category I'm not very into. Gumbo, jambalaya, all that sort of stuff, not really into it. Crawfish/crayfish, that grosses me out.

Tomato juice - yuck!



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With lobster and crab, I have the exact same feelings as you. Being from New England makes that tougher though; I can't tell you how many times I've told people I don't really care for lobster and they tell me to leave and make room for someone who does. But I've been enjoying so many different seafoods lately that I never thought I would like, I think it may be time to give lobster another chance. Calamari is the biggest one for me - when I was younger I couldn't imagine eating those things, now they are like friggin crack to me, I cannot possibly get enough of them. P.F. Chang's has a great calamari appetizer, I just learned that on Saturday.

Shrimp - never used to like it, now I really enjoy good (not rubbery) shrimp cocktail and I also really like the way Japanese steak houses cook them in garlic butter - very tasty.

As for clams...clam chowder barely counts. Steamed clams (steamers) or mussels are the standby around here, you just rinse them off, dip them in butter and pop them down. They're not really my thing, the texture of the bellies turn me off. The other common way to eat clams is fried clams, which you can get with or without bellies. The ones without bellies are great, but again that mushiness doesn't do it for me.

Cajun food I just never tried much of, but my buddy has a New Orleans buffet at his wedding where I got to sample crawfish cakes and fried alligator, among other things. Everything was great. Also, jambalaya is one of my favorite meals to make on Sunday for football.

Tomato juice and V-8 are both disgusting. They really seem like something I should try to appreciate, and every once in a while I give them a shot, but they're just gross. Bloody Marys are therefore disgusting by association.

One more I can think of off the top of my head is olives - I used to think they were the grossest little things. Now I could rip through a whole can of black olives and the olive bar at the grocery store is like heaven. I'm still up in the air about the jarred green olives w/ pimentos though; they're just not the same.

[Jeff W]

I've never been able to stomach Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage or Cauliflower--the smells alone make me ill. Not sure there's any way I'll be able to eat these. I also can't eat onions except as part of a soup or sauce where the taste/texture aren't so strong. I can't eat mayonnaise or gaucamole either because I ate them when I was a kid and got sick.

I'm surprised at how many people dislike clams, mussels, etc and shrimp in particular.

[Hoi Polloi]

I grew up eating pretty much everything and being exposed to a lot of different foods. The one thing I really couldn't stand, to the point of gagging, was, oddly enough, sweet potatoes. Now, I love them; especially garnet yams--just baked in the oven for an hour, they are like candy.